I’ve been a very happy Brothers customer for nearly two decades. We still have the same laser printer. Would highly recommend a laser printer over ink printers in most cases and would advocate for Brothers over any other brand printer at this point. The printer we have has never had any issues, including a situation where a bunch of boba tea spilled into the printer. Hosed it down, let it dry, and still works!
I was looking into Brother (again) as a result of this post, and it turns out they also have their own Instant Ink-style program, with the same "cancel and we'll trash your still-full toner cartridge" terms[0]. Though, perhaps unsurprisingly, it does seem like they do a much better job about making it clearer what you're opting into, though the "we'll make your formerly-working cartridge unusable" note was fairly buried in the FAQs, and not terribly clear up front.
The problem is sometimes, ( 10-20% ) I need colour printing. And colour laser is still expensive. I know it is wishful thinking but I do hope someday we could have some innovation with Colour Laser.
Reposting What I wrote during COVID [1]
I had to install a new inkjet printer because kids now need to print out their homework during COVID.
I swear to god if I ever become wealthy the printer industry is what I intended to completely destroy. Not in it for profit. Not positive sum whatever startup thinking. It will be Zero Sum.
I bought a Brother colour laser 8 years ago for about £150. Its about double that now [1] at £275. The only fault it has had was that once I hadn't used it for a couple of years and the first page I printed wasn't quite perfect. The next one was though.
I think for £275 with toner is worth it. Its pricier up front than the inkjets but the ease of use and reliability are totally worth it for me.
If I could ever get one for £150 I would have bought one without thinking. I think £150 / $199 is the sweet spot.
Another problem is I only need it during the pandemic. Otherwise I might only need about 10 page per year. And all of a sudden that £275 investment becomes quite expensive.
> The problem is sometimes, ( 10-20% ) I need colour printing. And colour laser is still expensive
It's worth the cost though. I bought a behemoth Brother printer/scanner laser printer years ago and it's been completely reliable (apart from occasionally disappearing from the network and needing a reboot). I don't have to worry about mainly printing black as the colour toner can hardly dry out and is always ready for use whereas I'm constantly hearing of occasional users of inkjets needing to buy fresh cartridges after just a couple of months of them not being used.
Honestly, looking at the mechanics that go into my Brother color laser printer I’m surprised they go for the price they do. It seems fairly cheap, everything considered.
Totally worth it though. I bought a Brother color laser over 10 years ago and it has been flawless. A lifesaver during covid and printing homework at home.
Before that I was going through cheap inkjets which each only lasted a year or less before becoming clogged and unusable. While cheap at around ~$100/ea, it was more expensive over the years than simply buying a color laser once and stop the frustration and waste.
My wife found some deal on Facebook marketplace for a HP 5550DN for $75. Had an extra set of toner cartridges for it, though the ones already in it aren't only a little below half full.
Though, if you don't have ample floor space... it's the size of our washer I think, what with the extra trays and whatnot.
I've used colour laser printers at home for quite some time. An older Xerox (6125?) for some years which I later replaced by a 6510 (built-in duplex, faster) when that started to exhibit problems. They cost a lot more than for cheap home inkjets when looking at the initial outlay (£150+ compared to £30+) but once you consider the cost of ink (even just black) including the fact that if you don't print regularly you waste a pile on head cleaning as they gum up, after a cartridge or few you hit break even.¹
Or you used to. Manufactures seem to have got wise to the fact people were starting to get wise to this: the price of official consumables has gone up, and they've cracked down on 3rd party toner carts much like the inkjet world. Running the models that have replaced the 6510 would cost considerably more per page² even if using official cartridges for the 6510. I found this out when looking for a laser to replace my Dad's inkjet that had just died. Looking at second hand units of models that are still dirt cheap to run, they are selling for silly prices – presumably people & small businesses that print high volume are collecting them while they can.
I will be taking very good care of my current printer to try make it survive as long as possible…
edit: this change has happened in the last few years, just checked records and I bought the 6510DN in July 2019.³
> I know it is wishful thinking but I do hope someday we could have some innovation with Colour Laser.
Unfortunately the only innovation seems to be in techniques for gouging money out of customers, inspired by methods that have worked in the inkjet market. When you achieve world domination you may have to cast the laser printer market into the same volcano as the inkjets and completely start afresh.
----
[1] Also, the output quality is far better unless you use more expensive paper (I get crisper black text out of my laser on cheap stock paper than inkjets get on more expensive stuff designed to minimise ink bleed and such). Photo output on plain paper is better too, though ink wins significantly once you buy speciality paper – though for the few pages of that sort of printing I've needed in recent years I've just had done at the printing booth in the local supermarket and that further beats home inkjet output and isn't particularly expensive for small one-off tasks.
[2] Noticeably more than 10x, as high as 25x comparing 3rd party supplies which the new models make harder to use.
[3] It was £146.22 including VAT & delivery, so my top-of-the-head value of £150 above was about right. The 6125 I bought in Jan 2009 for £126, pretty much the same accounting for inflation though lower spec (no built-in duplex), so it did a touch over a decade of good service.
I had a similar (or the same) HL model. It lasted 10-12 years, not sure exactly what the failure mode was, but I think I paid $75 for it. Definitely paid more for drums and toner over the years and I never even bought 1st party drums and toner!
I replaced it a few years ago with a more recent HL model that is almost identical, but has wifi. Really happy with the quality and reliability of both printers so far.
I bough a Brothers laser printer in 2020 because my kid and I were home to study and work, and I needed to print documents. It has been a glitch-free experience for me. The firmware works charmingly. No more messy ink change. And the laser cartridge lasts a long time for me. I would never go back to anything else!
One thing I wish could be better is the cloud printing. But it could be because all my online accounts are now MFA and it is PITA to set up my brothers with them.
Brother is less bad and I still recommend them, but they're not not shady.
The starter cartridge that came with my laser printer said it was empty after 500 pages. I found a way to reset the chip from the printer and am still printing with the same cartridge a year later.
That said, it now works with Linux on WiFi and has not given me any other issues.
I've had the same issue (and same solution), but it's not shady.
Brother makes reliable printers for offices. A consumer might want to print until the ink gets faded and streaky (to maximize lifespan), but for an office setting reliability is more important. You'd rather replace toner more often and have the prints always look great, than have to QC every sheet to determine if it's time to change the cartridge. Given the variable amount of ink on each printed page, Brother knows that a toner cart should last X pages 95% of the time (or whatever it is).
Has anyone bought one recently that can vouch for Brother (especially on Linux)?
I love the "10 years ago" testimonials and those are helpful, but I'm worried that quality/philosophy of Brother might have dropped in the intermittent time. Or are the same models still available new? That would be neat.
We've been using previous equivalents of DCPL3551CDW and MFCL3770CDW in work site container offices for basic printing/scanning not much seems to have changed from the previous models in that use case and the latest (installed last month) seems as solid as previous iterations.
The more abused ones (plenty of dust from gravel lots and probably takes a meter tumble every 6-12 months (not that we'd be told about it)) last 2-3ish years before something get finicky enough on them that replacing them makes sense. The ones in the more cared for areas haven't had an issue and have only been replaced because site managerials want a newer printer when the mistreated printers are 5-6 years newer than theirs (but no actual issue with the printer).
I can say that quality hasn't changed noticeably from what I have seen in this narrow band of their products and that these machnies have done well and lasted longer than other ocassional cheap printer we've put in for whatever reason. I'd extrapolate from that to say ten years in a home office printing a few pages a week should be easy for them (Though maybe there's a part that gives up the ghost after 7 years that I don't see pop up in our use case).
I bought a B&W half duplex Brother printer circa 2011 and have no problems with it. Besides the fact that it was half duplex. I've bought a generic brand toner cartridge twice since then; neither have had problems.
Earlier this month I upgraded to a full duplex color laser printer. (HL-3270CDW) Not because my existing printer is broken or has stopped working, but I was printing sections from a book and it annoyed me that I had to do all the flipping manually and gosh it would be nice if it were in color. Kind of an impulse buy.
It's the same. Everything is the same. It's got new tech in it; it's got newfangled stuff like wifi, bluetooth, and NFC. (my old one had nothing but a USB port; they had versions with ethernet and wifi but I got the cheapest one) But it looks the same, it feels the same, it sounds the same, the drivers are in one of my distro's package manager's overlays and just work. (Gentoo/brother-overlay)
I haven't owned it long enough to need to replace the toner. Amazon has generic versions of the toner for 30% of what Brother is charging. I don't know whether it will last forever with no issues, but my magic 8-ball says "all signs point to yes."
My old printer is the HL-2240. It's discontinued. It looks like the new model in that line is the HL-L2320D. Besides the fact that they've discontinued the half-duplex printers, (D is for full duplex, W is for wireless, C is for color) it looks like it's basically the same exact thing; they're putting precisely zero effort into "updating" the styling which I like. The toner cartridges for the 2240 and 2320 are not compatible, but Brother is still selling toner in the 2240 cartridges, despite the fact that they're not selling any printers that use them.
I have the HL-L3270CDW, too. No complaints so far. Linux, Mac, and Windows support, and the color is not too bad. It's not as beautiful as a good inkjet on quality, glossy paper, but it does the job for basic PDFs and web sites that have colored text.
I've had a Brother color laser for nearly 10 years at this point. Still on the original toner, because I don't print a lot. But it doesn't dry up like ink, and the printer just happily sits there waiting for the occasional page I need to print. Best money I ever spent on a printer.
I have a Dell 1320CN Color Laser, which has been great for some 15 years. The sad part is that it needs drivers on macOS/Linux which only work on Intel CPUs. So I have to cuddle an ancient iMac so to keep the ability to print.
I have a 1310CN from around the same period. It has been a great purchase. It has PostScript support. You should be able to get it to print using other PostScript drivers. (I’ve only ever used it from Windows PCs so I can’t tell you something that works for-sure.)
I have a ~$250 Brother laser printer that worked great until it mysteriously stopped accepting print jobs, regardless of connectivity (wifi, ethernet, USB). I've factory reset it multiple times to no effect and the only lead I have to potentially fixing it is reflashing its firmware, but that seems to require some kind of obscure Windows utility that only authorized Brother servicers have access to.
I had a ~$400 Brother laser about 10 years ago that I loved until one day it just stopped working completely. Repair company wanted... $500 so that ended that.
Same here, have a Brother printer that just printed and scanned. did nothing else and did not complain for years. Had the minimum features but that's exactly what I need it for.
I guess HP think they have a monopoly somehow for them engage in stuff like this? Except they don't.
My Brother multifunction has been without CYM inks for literally years, which was fine as I printed in only B&W. A recent system update has suddenly made it refuse to print anything, including B&W, because one or more color inks are empty, despite the black being 80% full.
Brother saw the money on the table and have decided to move towards the dark side.
This may no longer be true. I recall a story last year where you no longer require a FB account to access Oculus as they de-coupled them now. I have the original Quest but have not logged in a long while so can’t confirm if that’s the case.
I was in the same boat as op: Didn't want to care about sync at all and use it on all my devices. Didn't want to rely on a third party. Vaultwarden solved that for me.
Like all services I self-host for personal use, it's only accessible via VPN.
> The moat is so vast that I really doubt any current provider will ever catch up.
While I agree AWS is king today, this notion that no one will ever catch up have been said many times of other businesses throughout history and truthfully only time will tell if that remains true.
At one point in time it was hard to ever imagine someone dethroning Google search. Now I can only imagine it’s a matter of time before people prefer asking AI questions they use to query Google for in majority of cases.
No. In my experience they last for several years. At this point, we'll upgrade phones maybe every 4-5 years now so its unlikely we'll use an iPhone to it's full limits of software updates but certainly don't have issues of it only lasting for a couple years with prominent issues arising or anything like that.
